WASHINGTON — Never much known for restraint, Joseph R. Biden Jr. did not hold back during a presidential primary debate in 2007 when a voter asking about gun rights in a recorded video displayed a fearsome-looking semiautomatic rifle and declared, “This is my baby.” Mr. Biden, then a Delaware senator in a dark-horse bid for the White House, shook his head. “I tell you what, if that’s his baby, he needs help,” he said. “I think he just made an admission against self-interest. I don’t know if he’s mentally qualified to own that gun.” **SNIP** Mr. Biden, he added, has...

It’s that time again – time to make resolutions we won’t keep, spend two weeks writing the wrong date on checks and to look back on the year we’re leaving. As for 2012, it can’t end quickly enough. It was an awful year for many reasons. Let me count just a few of the ways: The Fiscal Cliff This column is due to my editors by noon on Saturday, so there’s a chance Speaker of the House John Boehner has cut some horrible deal with President Obama to avoid the over-hyped fiscal cliff since I submitted it. If that happens...

**SNIP** On Friday, however, CNN reported that "doctors have grounded her from overseas travel for several more weeks." The report made no mention of the trip to the Dominican Republic. The Huffington Post said Thursday that according to Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines, Secretary Clinton "continues to recuperate at home and will resume her office schedule next week." Reines also said that "Clinton had no schedule this week because of a long-planned holiday," Matthew Lee wrote. Last week, CNN said Clinton was too sick to appear before Congress to testify on the attack that saw four Americans killed, including Ambassador Chris...

Lisa Jackson is an object lesson in the manifest dangers of Leviathanism. Ms. Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is resigning in the new year. She took the reputation of the long-thuggish EPA to new lows, foisting new, damaging and ideologically based regulations on the nation, often by dictatorial fiat, with little transparency (think of her secret email accounts) and with no basis in science. Jackson‘s mission never was to protect or to better the environment but to use environmental regulations to reorder...

SAN DIEGO -- When it comes to how California handles illegal immigrants, the state is all over the map. Not unlike the rest of the country, the Golden State can't decide whether it wants to make life comfortable for the undocumented or make them so unhappy that it runs them off. 'Twas always thus. Consider my home state's history over the past few decades. In the 1980s, Republican Sen. Pete Wilson of California -- at the behest of agribusiness -- drove support for the Immigration Reform and Control Act, which President Ronald Reagan signed into law in 1986. The legislation...

WELL, so much for the 2012 apocalypse. If the ancient Mayans ever knew anything about the future, they made a serious miscalculation. The same fate has befallen the international climate change emergency brigade. About $1 billion and 18 "Kyoto" meetings later, the world has agreed to do nothing much more than meet again. How did this frightening climate threat dissolve into scientific uncertainty and political confusion? What of the many billions of dollars of wasted public resources? Some might blame the "sceptics", the "merchants of doubt" or the "deniers". Others point to the global financial crisis. We can say for...

Why subsidize an industry that kills millions of birds and has no environmental benefit? President Obama likes to talk about making sure â€śthe biggest corporations pay their fair share.â€ť Treasury secretary Tim Geithner calls for tax reform to close loopholes and subsidies. Budget hawks say federal spending must be curbed. Congress and federal environmental regulators claim they are doing everything they can to save endangered species. By doing nothing and waiting for December 31 to pass, all of those folks could strike a blow in support of each of these policies. All they have to do is let the federal...

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Obamacare’s twenty new or higher taxes amount to a net $1 trillion over the next decade, 2013-2022. These tax increases are already permanent law due to Obamacare. They include the medical device tax, the surtax on investment income, the individual and employer mandate non-compliance penalty tax, the medical itemized deduction “haircut,” the hike in the Medicare payroll tax rate, and others. These tax increases total exactly $1 trillion over the next ten years: 2012 CBO Report on Revenue Effects of ObamacareTax Hike Provisions Tax Hike 2013-2022

Nearly half a century ago, I dropped out of graduate school and enlisted as a foot soldier in AmericaÂ’s War on Poverty. Today, IÂ’m still on the front lines, working to move people out of dependency and into employment. But with an important difference: IÂ’ve become fed up with the useless policies that I once supported, and IÂ’m trying to change the strategy of our bogged-down army. We know for certain that income transfers, the preferred tactic of generations of liberals, have utterly failed to end poverty. My firsthand experience with welfare clients has shown me why: being on the...

These are the accounts of the Second American Civil War, also known as the Wars of Reunification and the American Warring States Period. After the breakup, many wondered which states would come out in control of the power void created by the dissolution of the United States. There were many with little chance against several of the larger more powerful states. The states in possession of a large population, predisposition for military (i.e.) military bases, and a population open to the idea of warfare fared the best. In the long term, we would look to states with self-sufficiency and long...

I know there are questions on my beat larger and more pressing than who’s worse as a TV journalist, Chelsea Clinton or Jenna Bush Hager, the presidentially-connected, pretend correspondents at NBC News. But I continue to be fascinated by a network news division putting someone as outrageously unqualified as Clinton on a prime-time newsmagazine. I watched her again last week in a softer-than-soft piece on a weight loss program started by Pastor Rick Warren at his Saddleback Church, and I can say with absolute certainty that she has not improved one lick in the last year. In fact, I think...

"A lot of our gun control measures are aimed at people who would obey the law and get the permits. How does keeping me or you from having a gun really control gun violence in Washington or New York City?" asks Craig R. Whitney, a former New York Times journalist and author of the new book, Living with Guns: A Liberal's Case for the Second Amendment. From the earliest settlement at Jamestown to the renewed debate over so-called assault weapons in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, gun control has always been contentious. The earliest...

In a legal argument formally presented in federal court in the case of Hobby Lobby v. Kathleen Sebelius, the Obama administration is claiming that the First Amendment—which expressly denies the government the authority to prohibit the “free exercise” of religion—nonetheless allows it to force Christians to directly violate their religious beliefs even on a matter that involves the life and death of innocent human beings. … The Obama administration is making a two-fold argument for why it can force Christians to act against their faith in complying with the regulation it has issued under the Obamacare law that requires virtually...

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi on Saturday called on US President Barack Obama to be "proactive" in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his forthcoming term, according to AFP. "We hope that the new American administration adopts a policy of conflict resolution rather than conflict management," Arabi said during a visit with Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr to the Ramallah headquarters of Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmud Abbas. Arabi said that in the four-hour meeting with Abbas they discussed the Arab League's promise to provide an economic "safety net" of $100 million a month to alleviate the effect of Israeli...

BANGUI -- The United States on Thursday evacuated its embassy in the Central African Republic after Seleka rebels seized parts of the impoverished but resource-rich nation, raising fears that the capital Bangui could fall within days. Patrick Ventrell, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said Ambassador Laurence D. Wohlers and his diplomatic team left Bangui on Thursday along with several private U.S. citizens. "As a result of this suspension of operations, the embassy will not be able to provide routine consular services to American citizens in the Central African Republic until further notice," he said. Ventrell reiterated that the...

Some days, it seems like thereâ€™s just no limit to what you can do with an executive order. The most recent addition to the list of many hundreds of EOs signed by Barack Obama lifts a freeze on the pay rates for certain DC denizens. The largest beneficiary of this largess (skimpy though it may be) is a name which may come as a surprise. President Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President...

Lawmakers in the House and Senate agriculture committees are working on a short-term extension to the expired U.S. farm bill, and plan to vote on the extension by Monday, the final day of 2012, a Congressional source said on Friday. The proposed extension to farm legislation that expired in September would be for “some months” but for less than a year, the source said. If an extension is passed, the United States would avoid reverting to 1949 “permanent law” and a potential spike in the retail price of milk to as much as $8 a gallon in 2013. …

Gun owners shine a spotlight on hypocritical attacks on their rights Gun grabbers have been exploiting the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., to pursue their long-standing agenda of disarming America. Law-abiding and responsible gun owners are fighting back against the onslaught. NBC anchor David Gregory acted on Sunday as if D.C. firearms laws didn’t apply to him. He brandished a 30-round rifle magazine on “Meet the Press” during an interview with National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. “Isn’t it just possible that we could reduce the carnage in a situation like Newtown?” Mr....

For those who would see recovery in current economic data, there are these facts to ponder. The first is that most of the decline in the unemployment rate has been a result not of more people working, but of more people leaving the labor force. In November, unemployment went down to 7.7 from 7.9 percent in October, the lowest unemployment rate since late 2008. But at the same time unemployment declined, so did labor force participation--which fell to 63.6 in November from 63.8 percent in October. Half a million Americans have left the labor market in recent months. Long term...

Ravi Dass Camp, a poor neighborhood in South Delhi, is a maze of narrow lanes, open drains, and pastel-colored mud-and-brick houses. Clothes are hung to dry on power lines above the corrugated metal rooftops. It’s a typical city slum where locals say they try to make an honest living doing everything from construction day-labor to driving auto-rickshaws to cleaning houses. But these days, Ravi Dass Camp has an unwelcome distinction: it is home to four of the six men accused of carrying out the Dec. 16 gang-rape of a 23-year-old woman aboard a chartered bus that inflicted such horrific damage...

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (CBS4)- The Commerce City Police officer who shot and killed a family dog last month has been charged with animal cruelty. The shooting happened Nov. 24 when officers received a call of a dog running unattended in the neighborhood. When officers tried to catch the dog, Chloe, they had trouble. They used a taser and tried a neck harness. Police Officer Robert Price then fired five shots, killing Chloe. The incident was caught on video.

The gender theory, which is behind the homosexual revolution and the attack on the family was highlighted in Pope Benedict’s Christmas message to Vatican prelates this morning. “There is no denying the crisis that threatens,” the family “to its foundations – especially in the Western world,” he said. Crediting the Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, for the research, Pope Benedict XVI said “the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper” than was originally believed. “While up to now we regarded a false understanding of...

NEWTOWN —— Newtown United was born in the agony and confusion that followed the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.The group of residents, including parents of children who survived, held its first meeting two days after the shooting as news teams from around the globe scrambled for reaction to the killings. Group leaders are working to ensure that Newtown United grows and gains power long after the news trucks leave. Before the week was over, leaders had formed an executive team and started the process of becoming a nonprofit organization. Some members had gone to Washington to speak against gun...

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LIVING PRAYER Brother Lawrence was a monk who lived almost 300 years ago and worked in the galley of his monastery. He wrote a book, The Practice of the Presence of God, which today is considered a classic in the area of Christian devotion. Brother Lawrence spent much of his time in the monastery scullery scrubbing pots and pans. He also had a collateral duty as the monastery cobbler. In these jobs, he said, he learned to glorify God in simple tasks and to pray with his hands. By bringing to each small job the...

Hollywood actress Jane Fonda lobbied the British Government to intervene and stop the 1981 hunger strike, newly released files reveal. The two-time Oscar winning star sent a telegram to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher urging her to grant the prisoners political status. Her message was sent in May 1981, at the height of a crisis which saw 10 republican prisoners starve themselves to death. The telegram, dispatched to Downing Street, is also signed by her then husband Tom Hayden, a US social and political activist. It states: “Please save the lives of the hunger strikers by granting them political status. “The...

Sam Swicegood, a Pizza Hut delivery man in Maryland fought off a group of attackers as he was attempting to deliver pizzas, and what happens? Pizza Hut gave him a demotion. According to Swicegood, he was sucker punched, which caused his glasses to â€śfly off.â€ť He then dropped the pizzas he was carrying and began to swing a small piece of a tent pole he had at his attackers, while covering his face. Â“ItÂ’s a little fiberglass road I had up my sleeve not thinking I would actually have to use it but more or less having a little comfort...

When families face a budget crunch, they have but a few options -- spend less, make more or starting selling stuff. So why doesn't the federal government do the same? Given the current state of the country's finances, many are wondering if it is time for the federal government to sell what it doesn't need -- basically, hold a yard sale. The federal government is sitting on billions in assets that are either sluggish or just dead weight. That includes federal land, buildings and other structures. Two years ago, President Obama's deficit commission identified 64,000 buildings and structures that it...

While the federal government and other states ponder more rigorous gun control laws following the shootings at a Connecticut elementary school, some legislators in Texas have taken the opposite approach. They have emphasized the need to make firearms more available, and their discussions have included increasing access for teachers and other school personnel. Ahead of the 83rd legislative session, bills have been proposed with that mission in mind. The efforts have drawn the praise of statewide elected officials including Gov. Rick Perry.

And the Central Command web site says Gottlieb was detailed from the White House for a time to a joint inter-agency task force focusing on detainee operations in Afghanistan. He was in Kabul from January 2010 through March 2011, according to a biography. Gottlieb, as a White House employee, is allowed to bring guests to dine in the White House mess -- basically an employee cafeteria.

Did some digging. From Dwight R. Worley's own piece at the Journal News website and Angry White Dude - Journal News reporter Dwight R. Worley owns a Smith & Wesson 686 .357 Magnum and has had a residence permit in New York City for that weapon since February 2011.I went to the Journal News map. There is no red dot on his address showing that he is a permit holder. To be fair, they may not have updated all of the info on that website yet. BUT, there are red dots shown in his area.

"God made man but Sam Colt made them equal." Yet is said that the 2nd Amendment follows hard upon the 1st so as to serve as its bodyguard -- providing the added incentive of coercive force by a wary citizenry to guarantee that those initial cherished liberties, expounded by our Founders, did not go the way of the 10th Amendment. The 2nd Amendment, interpreted as the right to bear arms by a free people, has not escaped that yawning chasm that has opened up between the political Right and Left, and the rationale behind this stratification falls along the same...

Gates: Software billionaire Bill Gates, who previously has advocated the reduction of the human population through the use of vaccines, and his wife Melinda marked the 100th year since the First International Eugenics Congress in London with a “family planning” summit with abortionists and the United Nations. The July 11 event, co-hosted by the United Kingdom Department for International Development, included organizations such as Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes International and the U.N. Populations Fund, as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Critics pointed out the summit was held 100 years after the July 1912 eugenics conference led by...

On Sunday, liberal New York newspaper The Journal News published the names and addresses of legal permit holders in two counties online and in print. If that wasn’t bad enough, this weekend, the Gannett owned Journal News announced that it will publish more names and addresses of residents holding pistol permits in the New York area. Enough is Enough. Two other outlets have posted names and personal contact info for the employees of this Gannett owned paper. Isn’t it about time the Gannett Board of Directors were contacted for their official reaction to this controversial practice? Do these board members...

A freshman GOP lawmaker wants to allow teachers to carry guns in Washington schools. KATU-TV reports Rep. Liz Pike from Camas says she will file a bill to change state law and allow teachers to carry concealed weapons in the classroom.

Morales said he had "been forced to take this step" to ensure that electric service rates remain "equitable" in the regions of La Paz and Oruro. The Spanish government said in a statement that it regretted Bolivia's decision to nationalize companies that included "Spanish, Argentine and American companies among its shareholders."

Former Newsweek editor Evan Thomas made a bizarre statement on PBS's Inside Washington Friday. "Unexplored story of the year: white men dropping out - dropping out of the workforce, dropping out of elections, just plain dropping out, getting social security, not doing anything, going hunting, fishing, just not in the game" (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo): Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/12/29/evan-thomas-white-men-dropping-out-workforce-going-hunting-fishing#ixzz2GU1AePnH

Mr. Brown said that the woman was motivated by hatred, telling the police, that she “pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I’ve been beating them up.” Ms. Menendez conflated the Muslim and Hindu faiths both in her comments to the police and in her target for attack, officials said.

Kellner says the store advertised them for $799 each, a $300 dollar discount. They got two of them, then received this letter from Dick’s on Christmas Eve, telling customers, it’s not fulfilling any more orders.

The co-author of a book on partisan science recently examined by Pacific Standard argues that our reviewer was a little too partisan himself. Any book that touches upon politics almost automatically angers half of the American public, regardless of what is written inside of it. It takes a special person—an objective, open-minded and self-critical one—to read and learn from a science book that criticizes people with whom the reader likes and agrees with politically.Recently, Pacific Standard published a review (“Red Science, Blue Science,” January/February 2013) by Wray Herbert, a pop psychology writer,of political writer Chris Mooney’s book The Republican Brain...

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen, leading to theories that there may have once been a church in Mecca. A stone carving of a Christian figure was found in Zafar, some 581 miles south of Mecca, and is thought to have been made in the era of the Prophet Muhammad. Paul Yule, an archaeologist from Heidelberg in Germany, has dated the 5feet 7inch tall relief which shows a man with chains of jewellery, curls and spherical eyes to around 530AD. ... The figure is barefoot, which was typical of Coptic saints....

The latest polls showed that last weekend's dust-up over Naftali Bennett's stance on how IDF soldiers who are uncomfortable with immoral orders are supposed to react has not had a negative impact on the Bayit Yehudi party's standing with the public. If anything, the controversy seems to have helped the party's prospects. Bayit Yehudi is now polling to come in as the third largest party in the Knesset, and is closing in to become the second largest. The party, headed by Bennett, continues to nip at the heels of the joint Likud-Yisrael Beytenu list, and the latest weekly poll by...

Tzipi Livni, who is running for Knesset at the head of an independent party, blamed Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett for the violence at the Oz Tzion outpost near Beit El Friday. "Bennett and the extremist rabbis led people to that hilltop on purpose, in order to create friction with IDF soldiers and a situation in which they would refuse orders," Livni wrote on her Facebook page. "These extremists led the people there on Sabbath eve in the knowledge that our children, the IDF soldiers, would have to evict them," she explained. "Netanyahu, who continues to wink toward the extremist...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Confused about the federal budget struggle? So are doctors, hospital administrators and other medical professionals who serve the 100 million Americans covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Rarely has the government sent so many conflicting signals in so short a time about the bottom line for the health care industry. Cuts are coming, says Washington, and some could be really big. Yet more government spending is also being promised as President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul advances and millions of uninsured people move closer to getting government-subsidized coverage. “Imagine a person being told they are going to get...

Dozens of youths who stayed at the Oz Tzion outpost near Beit El over the Sabbath, left the community after the Saturday evening havdala prayer. The youths spent the Sabbath at the outpost along with Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the Rabbi of Tzfat, and Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba. The two rabbis had driven to nearby Ofra Friday, to negotiate an agreement according to which security forces would stop trying to evict the youths, and the youths would leave voluntarily at the Sabbath's end. The IDF was forced to stop an eviction from a Shomron outpost on Friday afternoon when...

The Arab Balad party's election video is an animated clip showing Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and several nationalist MKs singing Hatikva in to a Middle Eastern tune. Video In the clip, Lieberman explains that he was the one who proposed a law requiring citizens to pledge allegiance to the state of Israel in order to be eligible for an ID card. He then announces that he has now become convinced that the tune of Hatikva – Israel's national anthem – should be changed so that Arabs feel comfortable singing it as well. The well-executed clip follows, with MKs Aryeh Eldad,...

(AP) Arab League chief says Palestinians to petition UN By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH Associated Press RAMALLAH, West Bank Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby said Saturday that two decades of talks with Israel have been "a waste of time" and that Palestinians will soon take a new statehood bid to the U.N.